353 
ceived at the present time with peculiar indulgence and interest, 
in consequence not only of the brilliant deductive discovery 
lately made of the new planet exterior to Uranus, but also 
of the extraordinary and exciting intelligence which has just 
arrived from Dorpat, of the presumed discovery, by Pro- 
fessor Midler, of a central cluster (the Pleiades), and of a 
central sun (Alcinoe, called also Eta Tauri): around which 
cluster, and which sun or star, it is believed by Midler that 
our own sun and all the other stars of our sidereal system, in- 
cluding the milky way, but exclusive of the more distant 
nebulz, are moving in enormous orbits, under the combined 
influences of their own mutual attractions, all regulated by 
the same great law. 
Sir William Hamilton exhibited Professor Midler’s work, 
Die Centralsonne, Dorpat, 1846, in which, as a first provi- 
sional attempt to determine the orbit of our own sun, with the 
help of the proper motions of a great number of stars, com- 
bined with Bessel’s parallax of 61 Cygni, Midler assigns to 
what he regards as the Central Sun, Alcinoe, a distance 
amounting to thirty-four million times the distance of our 
sun from us; concluding, also, but still only as first approxi- 
mations, that the period of our sun’s revolution is about 
eighteen millions of years, and that its orbit has now an in- 
_ ¢lination to the ecliptic of about 84 degrees, with an ascend- 
ing node, of which the present longitude is nearly 237°. 
; A chart of observed places of Le Verrier’s Planet was also 
_ exhibited by Sir William Hamilton ; and was illustrated by 
-» comparison with Bremiker’s Star-Map, which also was laid 
upon the table. 
